When you’re faced with a challenge do you adapt, change, and grow, or do you fight the new development as if your life depended on it? Do you tend to embrace change, or race from it? It turns out that how you react in the face of a challenge and what you do — whether you fight tooth-and-nail or embrace it and move through it — largely determines just how successful, happy, and fulfilled you are in your life.

Dr. Rick Hanson is a world-renown author, psychologist, and a senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. He also happens to be deeply interested in neuroplasticity and meditation. His most recent books, Neurodharma and Resilient, focus on the skills we need to develop to become happier and more adaptable in the face of change and upheaval. He says that resilience is really all about managing how we respond to change, and it’s at the core of our survival.

“Being resilient means to be able to evolve with the changing conditions around you,” Dr. Hanson says. “The pace of change is incredibly fast these days, and if we are going to keep up, we have to be resilient and adapt.”

Read more of my story over at Shondaland on how we can practice to become more adaptable in the face of chaotic, difficult, an challenging events both at home and out in the world.